It's something that Crime finally accomplished last year on their hugely acclaimed 'Shine' album, which Bronwyn modestly describes as 'a masterpiece.' The whole LP seemed always on the brink of some terrifying explosion but never quite going over the top. It's seven tracks seethed with emotion under the surface, a feeling that dragged you in and kept you as you waited (in vain) for its final climax.

The highlight of 'Shine' was the one long amalgamation of 'Hunter', Steal to the Sea' and 'Home is Far From Here' that filled the second side. It recalled the best narrative albums of the late '70s, in particular Patti Smith's 'Horses'. To Bonney, however, it suggests different things.

'To me, it's a bit like the third Velvet Underground album. There's a similar process at work there, the first two LPs are really angry and he (Lou Reed) appears to be exorcising things, like 'Heroin', where he captures the romantic side of the use of heroin, but there's also this underlying, undeniable element that he knows it's all bullshit.

'By the third LP, he seems much more pleased, more happy just about being himself. And there's a quietness in that, an intense quietness that I find much more effective than screeching guitars and 'F*** you f*** me' style vocals.' Although it shares the same elements, Crime's latest LP, 'The Bride Ship' is not as uniform.

But songs still interrelate with one another, like 'Stone' and 'The Greater Head', and the closing trilogy of 'The Bride Ship,' 'Free World' and 'New World'. And, like the single, which opens the LP, the songs echo Bonney and Adams' new outlook.

'We've begun to see things in a greater perspective,' explains Bronwyn. 'We've both developed more of an overview. My world has become larger; it's expanded from being occupied by two people to several billion. All my prejudices have just exploded in my face.

'This record is much more of an older view, it's more about the contemporary world and less about personal or private concerns.

'We simply decided that we like life and that life was an adventure playground put there for us to play in at our leisure, rather than a small, dark room we had to hide in.'

The album's highlight is the closing trilogy. It epitomises Crime's new found faith, their current viewpoint and their finely worked, emotive musical style.

Its peaks and enthusiasm creates and atmosphere similar to that of The Birthday Party's 'Mutiny in Heaven', Cave's cries of 'If this is Heaven I'm bailing out' having the same religious fervour as Bonney's quizzical, 'Freedom, this really is a stroke of luck, because we've been looking for freedom.' For Bonney it's simply the best thing Crime have ever done.

'The Bride Ship' is how I feel now. It's not that I feel better or worse than I did, just that the way I see the world has changed. I don't know if I try and analyse the differences, I just know they exist.'

'The Bride Ship' points the way forward for Bonney and Crime, as he hones his peculiarly parable-like songwriting down to perfection.

'I've always really liked narrative songs,' he says. 'Lyrically I was capable of pulling that off this time and I don't think that, in the past, I could have, it's definitely an area I want to continue working in.

'The Bride Ship' also continues one of Bonney's favourite themes that extend through much of his work, including '86's Adventure' and last year's 'Steal to the Sea' - escapism.

In detail of the search for a new life in a free world parallels Bonney's own search for somewhere to live outside his native Australia. Ironic, then, that the whole thing was sparked off by Adams writing 'New World.'

'I had an idea about East and West, after we went to Poland,' she says. 'And I wrote 'New World' about refugees leaving Europe for America after the Second World War. Originally, it had a lot of lines from old war songs and that's what sparked off the trilogy.'

'We went to the East a lot last year,' continues Bonney. 'And we also went to America and we found them to be very similar.

'It seemed that people in America were trapped in much the same way as people in Poland, that they were stranded in their petty concerns. Only in Poland, it was getting the milk every day, while in the States it was getting the Cadillac.

'We discovered America and the East are just opposite poles of the same thing, they're both out of control, one is out of control consumerism and greed, the other is out of control deprivation. 'The Bride Ship' is just about those travels, the two sides.

'The original bride ships used to go to Australia - being a penal colony there were a lot of men and very few women, so women used to go out there from Ireland, which is what my grandmother did, to marry into a better life. Initially they all ended up in the workhouse and you could go and buy a wife for seven and six, or whatever it was in those days.

'Also, in Australia, it's quite popular to go and buy a wife from South East Asia. It's just the promise of this thing, being able to buy a wife, it's like capitalism taken to its ultimate conclusion.

It appeared to us that the '80s are spiritually bereft, they're a stagnant era and it's reflected in everything, there's no sense of future, no possibilities.